For those who don't know me, my name is Kerby Jackson and I'm a miner, an author and a historian from Josephine County. Some of you may know me from OregonGoldHunters.com or OregonGold.net where I occasionally post information about the mining history of Oregon.

Before Hal Anthony does his presentation on mining laws and gives you some insights into your rights as a miner, I'd like to give you a little bit of background on how these mining laws came to exist. In particular, I want to talk a little bit about William Stewart who is regarded as “The Father of Mining Laws” in this country.

For those who aren't familiar with William Stewart, he was a miner, an attorney and a Senator in Nevada during the last half of the 19th century. He was also instrumental in the establishment of the State of Nevada and he wrote much of that state's constitution. In 1868, he authored the 15th Amendment which protects the the voting rights of all people regardless of their race, color or their previous servitude. In essence, he gave recently freed slaves the right to cast a vote.
Later on, Ulysses S. Grant asked Stewart to sit on the bench of the United States Supreme Court, an honor which he humbly declined.

But perhaps most importantly to those of us here today, William Stewart was the father of our mining laws.

Stewart was born in New York in 1827, but his parents soon moved to Ohio and he spent much of his early life there. As a young man he became a teacher, but in 1849 he decided to attend Yale University.

Fortunately for us, he was a college drop out and like a lot of other men his age, he was lured West by the California Gold Rush.

In January of 1850, William Stewart booked passage to the gold fields from New York City and after a long journey by ship, he arrived in San Francisco. From there, he took a ferry up the American River and arrived in Sacramento. From there, he went on to Nevada City where there were new strikes taking place. With most of the money he had left, Stewart outfitted himself with a pan, a pick and a broken shovel and he went to the nearby Coyote Diggings.

With the help of a man he met by the name of Savage, Stewart staked his first mining claim on Buckeye Hill and went back to town for the night.
 

Now, the next morning, there was a big commotion up on Buckeye Hill. It seems that the guy who owned the claim right next to Stewart had hit pay-dirt and it was assumed that this rich gravel ran through Stewart's claim too.

With that, William Stewart went to his own claim and he prepared to start working.

But as he started digging, along came the fella who had helped him stake the claim out. Savage asked him what he was doing.

He told him that he was going to sink a shaft and locate the same lead that his neighbor had found.

And Savage said “Oh, no you won't. This is my claim!” He told Stewart to leave the country.

Stewart knew a little bit about how grievances were handled in mining camps and he offered to arbitrate over the disputed claim. That meant that he and Savage would each pick a neighboring miner of their choice and then those two miners would agree on another miner of their choice. Savage and Stewart would then each make their case and then this miner's court would issue a decision based on their arguments and evidence.

Mr. Savage was a pretty big man for those days. He was about 6 feet tall, 200 pounds and as his name might indicate, he was pretty prone to fighting. He told Stewart that he wasn't going to arbitrate over the claim and with that, he grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and they took to fighting.

Now, Savage had his back to a little ravine and as a result of the momentum, they both fell over the side and landed on a bunch of quartz boulders at the bottom. Luckily for Stewart, he fell on top of Savage when they hit bottom and then began to beat and choke the living hell out of the big guy. Meanwhile, there was a crowd of miners watching them up on the hill. Of course, they were really enjoying the show and having a lot of fun placing bets on who they thought would win.

Eventually, Stewart managed to knock his adversary out and that's when he picked up a big rock. When Savage regained consciousness, he threatened to bash his head in if he didn't tell the truth about the claim.

Needless to say, Mr. Savage happily told the miners on the hill that it was, in fact, William Stewart's claim.

A few other miners also came forward and served as witnesses on Stewart's behalf. All the miners present agreed that Stewart's claim was legal and that it was his to work.

This was William Stewart's first introduction to mining law.
 
 

Over the next few years, Stewart led quite an exciting life as a miner.

He picked up a few partners and they took about a thousand ounces of gold from the claim on Buckeye Hill. From there, he headed east to the Sierras, did some prospecting, surveyed mining ditches, fought Indians, survived a gun battle with an angry poker dealer and even saved an innocent man from a lynch mob. But most importantly, he found his calling in life and that was mining law.

Stewart became very knowledgeable about the local laws and traditions of the various mining districts and before long, miners began to come to him with their legal problems. By 1852, he actually quit mining and opened a legal practice specializing in mining law. Shortly thereafter, his popularity and success led him to being elected as the District Attorney of Nevada County, California. He ascended the political ladder from there until he became a U.S. Senator for Nevada in 1865.

It's never been clear if Stewart actually went to college after he dropped out from Yale before coming West.
 
 

In the 1860's, there was a lot of debate in Washington D.C. over the legal status of miners in the Far West. And it wasn't just about the activity of the miners, but also the activities of the farmers and the ranchers.

You see, all of these guys used the resources that were to be had on government land. Miners freely used the water and extracted minerals, while the farmers and ranchers grazed their livestock and grew crops on federal lands. They utilized the timber too.

Now, legally, nobody had any rights to do that, but the states and territories felt that their activities were a beneficial and necessary use of federal resources.

However, some within the U.S. government felt that these early miners, farmers and ranchers were essentially engaging in a form of theft and stealing government owned resources.

Some of these government leaders felt that the federal government needed to seize these resources, particularly the mines, and to utilize them for the government's welfare. 

Numerous bills were introduced to try to accomplish this, one of them going as far as planning to send the U.S. Army to invade the Far West and to seize mines, farms, ranches, etc. and their "products" through the use of force if necessary.

Basically, some within the federal government wished to go as far as to use the military to kill miners and settlers, to destroy small settlements, mining camps and to seize their property for the purpose of paying off the debts accrued from the Civil War.

Now, needless to say, leaders in the Far West were not very happy about this. As well, miners and settlers were not too amused either and they took this as a very serious threat.

In fact, down the road here about 75 miles, some miners even organized into armed groups and began routinely patrolling the local stagecoach routes with the intention of attacking any military detachments they might encounter in the area.

Fortunately, a small group of leaders in the Far West were supportive of the miners.

William Stewart had just entered his first term as Senator and he was one of the most vocal of these men. By this time, he had already made his mark in the development of California's mining laws and he had also earned a fortune as the attorney in a famous lawsuit in the Comstock. Through some political alliances, he gained a seat on the newly Senate Committee on Mines and Mining and this position and his prior experience gave him the power to influence laws on mining.

Stewart was a supporter of an ideology called “Free Mining”. Though this term, “Free Mining” might give one the impression that it was about the right to mine minerals on federal land without paying a royalty, what the supporters of “Free Mining” actually meant was that miners should have as much liberty as possible when engaging in their pursuit of mineral wealth.

This concept officially originated on the Senate floor in 1850, where it was mostly promoted by Senators Benton and Seward.

Though the Free Mining debate had died down a little during the Civil War, in 1865, Congressman George Julian of Indiana introduced a bill calling for the federal government to seize, subdivide and sell the mineral lands of the Far West. Though this bill had much support, it failed to pass.

It did not take long for Free Mining supporters to mount a retaliation. In early 1866, Senator Seward introduced a bill under the title of S 257 that would make the concept of Free Mining, the law and it would provide certain legal protections to miners. Like Julian's bill, Seward's bill also failed.

By this time, William Stewart, who had been a supporter of Seward's bill, formulated a plan that he soon put into action and that would be the subject of much controversy for decades to come.

Stewart located a bill known as HR 365 that was officially titled "An Act Granting the right of way to ditch and canal owners over the public lands in the States of California, Oregon, and Nevada". There was very little debate on this particular bill and Stewart knew that it would soon become law.

Stewart used his position on the Public Lands committee to wrangle the bill away from its author and he then inserted into this bill, the body of Seward's failed legislation on Free Mining.

On July 26th, 1866 this bill was signed into law, giving us all the right to locate, claim, occupy, develop and patent the mineral lands that lie within the Public Domain of this country. These are rights which we still enjoy nearly 150 years later and they are rights that we enjoy due only to the efforts of William Stewart so many years ago.
 

With that, I would like to now turn this over to my friend, Hal Anthony, who will speak at length about the contents of William Stewart's Mineral Grant of 1866.
 

Copyright 2010 by Kerby Jackson. Work archived by WorldWideOCR.com
 

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